Canopy Roads of South Georgia

Protracted extreme drought: U.S. Drought Monitor, 2012-05-08

Acording to U.S. Drought Monitor, drought throughout south Georgia and surrounding areas is either extreme or exceptional, and has been for months.

Here you can see detail for Georgia:

Valdosta Farm Days returns Saturday 21 April 2012

Returning for its second year, Valdosta Farm Days starts this Saturday:

When: 9AM-1PM Saturday 21 April 2012 Where: Historic Lowndes County Courthouse, 100 East Central Avenue, Valdosta, Georgia

There's a list of vendors on VFD's web page. See also their facebook page.

Support local agriculture and buy direct from area farmers while shopping at Downtown Valdosta Farm Days.

The market presents producers from the surrounding areas of Lowndes County offering fresh fruit, vegetables and so much more.

Come for the freshness and stay for the fun at Downtown Valdosta Farm Days!

At the market, you'll find locally-grown, locally-raised, locally-produced fruits and vegetables, plants, herbs, meats, farm-fresh eggs and dairy products, baked and prepared foods, snacks, and coffee. You'll also find a variety of artisan and natural value-added products including products made from recycled goods, birdhouses, handmade soaps and body products, candles, gift baskets, and honey products.

Oh, look! Potatoes from Okra Paradise Farms! OPF won't actually have those there this weekend (they only just bloomed last week), but stay tuned for later Valdosta Farm Days!

-jsq

Greed is Good for Poisoning the Food Supply?

For many years big agro has treated the world's health as an economic externality, a problem for somebody else that did not affect its own bottom line. That is starting to change, most recently in Argentina.

Anthony Gucciardi wrote for NaturalSociety 11 April 2012, Explosive: Monsanto ‘Knowingly Poisoned Workers’ Causing Devastating Birth Defects,

In a developing news piece just unleashed by a courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.

This would be the same Monsanto that was convicted of chemical poisoning in France.

But this is once again far away in a small country of which we know nothing, right? Wrong:

The farmers come from small family-owned farms in Misiones Province and sell their tobacco to many United States distributors. The family farmers say that major tobacco companies like the Philip Morris company asked them to use Monsanto's herbicides and pesticides, assuring them that the products were safe. Through asserting that the toxic chemicals were safe, the farmers state in their claim that the tobacco companies ”wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects.”

Still, it must be some obscure poison only sold in the third world, right?

Wrong:

The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto's Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What's more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto's Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.

That would be the same Roundup that farmers use around here all the time, without protective equipment. The Roundup we already knew was

Monsanto Worst Company of 2011 —Natural Society

Back in 2010, a survey by Covalence found Monsanto to be the least ethical company in the world. Another year, another award for Monsanto!

Michelle Schoffro Cook wrote for care2 1 February 2012, Monsanto Wins Worst Company of 2011 Award,

Natural Society has awarded Monsanto the Worst Company of 2011 award for its ongoing work to threaten human health and the environment. Currently responsible for 90 percent of all genetically-modified (GM) seed in the US, the biotechnology giant is also the leader in developing genetically-modified (GM) seeds and the resulting crops worldwide. But Monsanto is perhaps best known for its herbicide Roundup, which many experts link to soil damage and herbicide-resistant superweeds, not to mention potential health problems.

The article gives plenty of reasons, and that was even before the recent hard evidence that both Monsanto's GM corn and Monsanto's Roundup are toxic to humans.

Why do people keep growing that stuff around here and spraying Roundup on it?

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Both Roundup-Ready corn and Roundup are toxic to humans: scientific evidence

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini put out a press release yesterday, NEW STUDY: Genetically Modified Corn Toxic to Humans,

“We were very much surprised by our findings. Until now, it has been thought almost impossible for Bt proteins to be toxic to human cells. Now further investigations have to be conducted to find out how these toxins impact the cells and if combinatorial effects with other compounds in the food and feed chain have to be taken into account,” says Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen, who supervised the experiments. “In conclusion, these experiments show that the risks of Bt toxins and of Roundup have been underestimated.”

The toxicity of the corn itself may have been a surprise, but not that of Roundup:

These findings are in accordance with several other investigations highlighting unexpected health risks associated with glyphosate preparations.

Previous studies, including ones by Dr. Séralini, already showed exposure to glysophate (the active ingredient in Roundup) to be "a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma", and to be toxic to human umbilical, placental, and placental cells with a that "is far below agricultural recommendations and corresponds to low levels of residues in food or feed." In Argentina, Prof. Andrés Carrasco has demonstrated birth defects in amphibians and there is increasing evidence of human birth defects.

Regarding Monsanto's GM corn itself, we already knew it causes liver and kidney damage in rats (later reverified using Monsanto's own data), and chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression.

Now we have even more hard evidence of the toxicity of Monsanto's GM corn and of Monsanto's Roundup. The journal article is available through Wiley online.

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Monsanto convicted of poisoning

Marion Douet wrote for Reuters today, Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning in France. The farmer who wonthe case remarked,

"I am alive today, but part of the farming population is going to be sacrificed and is going to die because of this," Francois, 47, told Reuters.

He and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association last year to make a case that their health problems should be linked to their use of crop protection products.

France and the EU have already take other actions:

The Francois case goes back to a period of intensive use of crop-protection chemicals in the European Union. The EU and its member countries have since banned a large number of substances considered dangerous.

Monsanto's Lasso was banned in France in 2007 following an EU directive after the product had already been withdrawn in some other countries.

France, the EU's largest agricultural producer, is now targetting a 50 percent reduction in pesticide use between 2008 and 2018, with initial results showing a 4 percent cut in farm and non-farm use in 2008-2010.

Maybe we should try that in the U.S. Ban RoundUp, that is. Like Paul François said back in December aboout Lasso,

Monsanto knew they had a problem with this product.

As Yves Calvi wrote for RTL.fr 12 December 2011,

Because of the dangerousness of these products, in the country, nobody says anything, it's omerta! Why such a vow of silence? The pressure of lobbyists is strong according to Paul François. He says the dangers of pesticides may be as important as those of asbestos.

I would say worse, because asbestos doesn't usually drift across the road onto you, and isn't deliberately applied to most crops, unlike RoundUp.

It's time to break the silence, so we won't have so many farmers and children and other people being made sick by pesticides.

-jsq

Insecticides are killing the honeybees

Is corporate profit worth wiping out honeybees?

Brian Wallheimer wrote in ScienceDaily 12 Jan 2012, Honeybee Deaths Linked to Seed Insecticide Exposure,

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil — up to two years after treated seed was planted — on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The authors are careful to say they don't claim to have found the only cause of honeybee deaths, because they can't prove that. They do seem to have proved specific insecticides are one cause.

Is wiping out honebees worth the profits of a very few large agrobusinesses that sell these poisons?

Who sells this stuff, anyway? Bayer, Arysta, and Valent sell clothianidin, and Syngenta (SYT) sells thiamethoxam. What's Syngenta's excuse?

How do we feed a growing world population?

By poisoning honeybees, apparently.

-jsq

McDonald's failure in Bolivia: two different takes

So, what Bolivia ejecting McDonalds a blow against capitalism, or was it capitalism in action?

Stephanie Garlow wrote for Global Post 1 November 2011, McDonald’s failure in Bolivia: The country closed its stores and left Bolivia in 2002. Why couldn't it succeed there?

It's the country that turned its back on McDonald's.

The fast food giant added the traditional llajwa sauce to its classic patties, but still Bolivians weren't conviced.

So after five years, McDonald's closed its eight branches and left the country in 2002.

Now a new documentary, "¿Por qué quebró McDonald's en Bolivia?", explores why McDonald's failed. Filmmaker Fernando Martinez focuses on social and cultural aspects to explain the company's lack of success. "Culture beat a transnational, globalized world," he said.

Here's the movie trailer. Yes, it's in Spanish, but I think you'll get the general idea from the pictures without needing to follow the dialog. Or here's another version with even less dialog and some English subtitles.

South Georgia Growing Local Conference, 14 January 2012

Last time some okravores (south Georgia locavores) realized nobody else was going to hold a conference about growing local in the characteristic soils and climate and with the characteristic foods and culture of south Georgia, so okravores met in Tifton and learned about everything from controling insect to which breeds of cows produce the best organic milk. Raven demonstrated you can make cheese in south Georgia and Gretchen demonstrated preserving beautyberry and other jams and jellies, along with many other interesting talks and demonstrations, and good food. The South Georgia Growing Local Conference is back, this time near Reidsville, in January.

When:

Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, 9-5

Where:

UGA's Vidalia Onion & Vegetable Research Center, between Lyons & Reidsville, Ga. & Red Earth Farm, Reidsville

What:

Organic farming as productive as pesticiding (proven yet again)

Rodale Institute has been running a side-by-side comparison of organic and chemical agriculture since 1981. They report:

After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of transition, the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long term potential of the two systems.

Year after year, Rodale found:

Organic yields match conventional yields.

As Tom Philpott reported for Mother Jones 17 November 2011, Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag,

And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in 1998, which has just released its latest results.

At the LTAR fields in Adair County, the (LTAR) runs four fields: one managed with the Midwest-standard two-year corn-soy rotation featuring the full range of agrochemicals; and the other ones organically managed with three different crop-rotation systems. The chart below records the yield averages of all the systems, comparing them to the average yields achieved by actual conventional growers in Adair County:

Norman Borlaug, instigator of the "green revolution" of no-till and pesticides, when asked in 2000 whether organic agriculture could feed the world, said: